Like many other landmarks, both the museum in Washington and the military cemetery in Virginia are places where players can come across Pokemon creatures.

They are both reportedly also Pokestops, where players can collect virtual items like snacks and medicine for Pokemon, but officials at the museum are trying to get it removed from the game.

There should be a way for places to get themselves removed from the game.

There has been no response yet from game developers Niantic Labs on whether it could stop Pokemon creatures from appearing inside the Holocaust Museum.

But I'm not convinced that it is best for these sacred/somber places to remove themselves. They should want to lure or welcome young people and those who otherwise steer clear of these imposing and (to many) terribly depressing places. Perhaps a way could be found to teach the game-users to recognize the need, in certain places, to deploy their preferred means of encountering the world in a discreet and respectful manner. I haven't observed how players act in these real places, but surely some code of behavior could emerge. Keep voices quiet. Don't assemble in groups. Protect others around you from noticing that you are here for the game.

Etiquette is important! This game presents an opportunity to develop some awareness of etiquette and to feel motivated to practice it. Isn't that a better approach than exclusion of the people you don't like? Now, the museum isn't barring anyone from the museum. It's only barring the use of the game in the place, but this does exclude the group — possibly a huge group — who want to go to the museum because of the game.

93 comments:

Don't be dicks in there of course, but ANYTHING that draws people into a location is not always a bad thing. With fewer and fewer survivors left (but more and more deniers on campuses), we need to keep this truth alive in face of an amazing attempt to deny reality. If this game can get families in there to possibly view a needed, but unsettling, memorial --- I don't think it's a negative.

Give me a freaking break. It is just rude to use your phone, let alone play a game, in either of these places. Arlington has had continual problems with people using its grounds for recreation. You don't jog in Arlington and you don't play video games.

Rude people probably visited there before, their rudeness just manifested in a different way. Now they're noticing the rude players but there's probably a lot more quiet ones going unnoticed. Maybe some of those people wouldn't have been tempted to go otherwise and now they have an opportunity to learn something. (Game play doesn't require constant activity. There's lots of time to look around.)

I doubt very much that you will get Pokemon Go players to learn any etiquette or social skills.

I could see the game being modified for certain locations to encourage people to go there, but not actively play the game while there. For example, the game could be set up such that there is no active gameplay within the museum, but if you have the game on, and you spend X amount of time/walk Y number of steps within the museum, then after you leave you get some significant in-game reward.

"There has been no response yet from game developers Niantic Labs on whether it could stop Pokemon creatures from appearing inside the Holocaust Museum."

It's quite interesting. The Pokemon creatures appear only to the Pokemon players. It that sense they are "appearing inside the Holocaust museum." When virtual reality and traditional physical reality occupy the same space things get confusing.

"Perhaps a way could be found to teach the game-users to recognize the need, in certain places, to deploy their preferred means of encountering the world in a discreet and respectful manner. I haven't observed how players act in these real places, but surely some code of behavior could emerge. Keep voices quiet. Don't assemble in groups. Protect others around you from noticing that you are here for the game."

I am thinking of the ossuary at the Verdun battlefield, where the bones of the fallen are kept. When I first visited that place many years ago the guards were all veterans of the battle. When one of the visitors spoke above a mere whisper, never mind in a normal voice, that person would be approached by one those ancient gentlemen, who would hurry over and admonish him thus, and firmly: "Silence, s'il vous plaît! Silence!"

We need to get people in there who would not otherwise go, so let's put in a hotdog stand and maybe a strip club, and some beer. Getting the maximum number of people in there is the main point of the place isn't it? Check your privilege.

I've seen people wading in the pool of the World War II Memorial, I've seen kids racing around the inside of the Lincoln Memorial. Few things shock me anymore, but the sight of someone using a smartphone - for any reason - in a setting like this gives me pause.

Ignorance is Bliss had a great suggestion: make exploration and learning about the place part of the game. Otherwise, why would you want people to come in to do something that has nothing to do with the place. They can do that anywhere else. The real promise of this technology would be to have an app that puts the whole world and it's history on a self-guided tour.

Not exactly apples to apples, but I wish someone of influence would say something about not treating the WWII Memorial as a foot bath. Yes, it gets hot in Washington - that's why there are 500 people walking around the Mall with cold water for sale.

Maybe it's just me, but I think there are places where one should conduct themselves with restraint. It's about respect. Why on earth is this even something that needs to be addressed?

You can bet if this had been possible when I was younger and I used my phone to 'catch' pokemon in such a place my mom or dad would have made sure I remembered to never be that disrespectful again. The same goes for my kids now.

Actions, consequences, responsibility, accountability - respect for others - these have become such foreign concepts. No wonder this country is in the shape it's in.

I wonder what would happen if people wandered in to a church service, a Catholic Mass, to collect pokemon? It's absolute rubbish that people are so incapable of evaluating what behavior should be appropriate. Sad. Just sad.

Some people mourn the dead. Some people celebrate the dead. Others yet play with, on, next to the dead. We each have our conception of life, the universe, and everything.

I wonder if the abortion industry and Planned Parenthood would be equally welcoming to visitors. Ostensibly not for profit yet very lucrative businesses profiting from a culture of death in private sanctuaries.

I know some older guy who was proud to tell me that he had recently gone to some battlefield/cemetery/memorial in France and, with all respect and reverence, ceremoniously held a bottle of beer out at arm's length, then turned it upside down to pour on the ground for the fallen. Maybe the soldiers were Irish. Maybe the beer was Guinness.

Etiquette? What etiquette? President I-me-I exploits memorial ceremony for political purposes. DoJ goes after NC for legalizing old-timey restroom etiquette. Some Americans still insist, so I don't blame you for the it's-important fuddy-duddyism, but it's dead.

I wonder what would happen if a slew of pokemon hunters descended on a BLM March and completely ignored march protocol by wandering erratically and aimlessly through the crowd, oblivious to and dismissive of the seriousness of what the demonstrators were protesting/trying to shine a light on?

The Pokemon Go sites are taken from the game Ingress. I'm sure Ingress players have been playing at the Holocaust Museum for years without anyone knowing. Typically, it is next to impossible to get a site removed by Niantic, because the teams have strategic reasons for having sites removed. Nonetheless, an institution as prominent as the Holocaust Museum might be able to pull it off. Or maybe just move the sites to the public space outside the museum.

Ingress itself was built from an app called Field Trip, which allowed people to record that they had visited sites of interest by being physically present at those sites. It turns out people are motivated by keeping score! I think this point is consistent with Ann's argument that there are creative ways to get people interested in doing things that are good for them. I know as an Ingress player that I have visited a lot of small towns that I would not have otherwise in order to capture "unique" sites.

I just have to shake my head sometimes: if Hitler would've known all the criticism he would get, he really SHOULD have killed all those Jews, just on Principle...

Let's face it: if Hitler was actually able to pull off something on the scale of the "Holocaust" there is no way he could've lost the War. The Victors get to write the History, though, and the Jews have their fingerprints all over those pages...

How many American Lives were lost for a European War that the Jews instigated? And notice how there are Jews everywhere, now? Who Hid the six-million Jews? THAT is what we should be asking when we talk about the "Holocast"...

I know, I know: People are going to call me anti-Semantic, but the Truth is the Truth, no matter what the Cosmopolitans say...

Don't get me wrong: I'd be just fine if we shipped the Cosmopolitans to, say, Africa or something: that seems Fair. But we have to Free America from the Media-Government-Global Complex before we are strangled by their Rules...

The Cattle Cars are coming: THIS is why the Left loves High-Speed Trains...

As laughable as it may seem, the insane success of Pokemon Go will present all sorts of new, unexpected results. One possibility that will almost certainly happen is legislation on mobile AR games that make use real word landmarks. I predict that there will be stipulations and legal ramifications if game devs fail to take into account the wishes of curators and owners of public locations like bars, museums, churches, movie theaters, bus stations ect. I say this because historically the one thing that you can always count on is more legislation.

Malware writers were very quick to take advantage of this and a malware infested clone of the game were found floating around the internet. This infected version of the game can do anything from stealing SMS messages, call logs, contact lists, browser history, geolocation, and installed apps to executing commands remotely to take pictures, record video, record calls, or send an SMS message.

The idea of maximizing the number of visitors to such a place, without regard to whether or not they have any interest or intent of learning about the Holocaust, strikes me as very similar to the idea that we ought to maximize voter registration and turnout.

n.n. wrote:Some people mourn the dead. Some people celebrate the dead. Others yet play with, on, next to the dead. We each have our conception of life, the universe, and everything.

I wonder if the abortion industry and Planned Parenthood would be equally welcoming to visitors. Ostensibly not for profit yet very lucrative businesses profiting from a culture of death in private sanctuaries.

I wonder if they need to work on a "less crunchy" method of catching the unborn Pokemons.

Michael K: not just malware. Apparently, Niantic set up the game installer to require full-rights access to your Google account. This means your contacts DB, GPS history, search history, gmail (I think) and other things.Niantic has responded to criticism of this by saying "Oops. I guess we should fix that. Eventually."As a retired real-time & embedded systems SW engineer, I am once again appalled at the sloppy and dangerous SW crap that the public is willing to accept.

Are you really so dense that you can't see the difference between Arlington National Cememtary and a cemetary?

Is there a difference between the amount of dead in each body that requires a different set of standards? Oh yeah, wait, one is a Federal Facility, so of course the Federals in charge have to make rules.

(Overheard just now: It's National French Fry Day! I guess Freedom Fry never stuck.)

Do you have no sense of imagination about alternative ways of achieving decorum? By the way, you may be exhibiting cultural bias in your zero tolerance for play within an encounter with death. Check your privilege.

I imagined this:

"Well, you know how hot it's been. - Yeah. Nights, they aren't any better...He says..."Hey, little girl, you know what the coolest spot in town is? And I said "No, Sam. I guess I don't." And he said..." The cemetery. That's where." "Know why?" "Cos they got all of them big, cool tombstones." "Ever stretch out on a tombstone, Delores?" "Feel all that nice, cool marble all along your body?--"In the Heat of the Night"

Why doesn't the museum just ask people not to use their phones? If you are listening to the tour on your phone you shouldn't be swiping at anything anyway. Set standards and expect people to follow them. Why is pokemon go worse than fb or texting?

The Holocaust Museum should count their blessings. They have not yet been targeted for a BLM protest.......It's just a matter of time. When you stop to think about it, the true heirs of Anne Frank are Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin. The Holocaust Museum should be directing a certain portion of their income to funding scholarships in the names of these two martyrs. There should be an Anne Frank/Michael Brown fellowship at every Ivy League university in America. Such scholarships and fellowships would do much to heal the racial wounds of America, but they won't just happen unless and until the BLM protesters gather at the Holocaust Museum and make it their target.

You can read Derrida for pleasure, but you have to be interested in the puzzle of language.

My professional writing (and research pursuant thereto) is to a large degree concerned with ancient Indo-European languages and the origins of Indo-European peoples. Which fact should indicate that I am indeed very interested in the puzzle of language.

I am not interested in Derrida and I do not find anything he's written in any way pleasurable to read. I have read his works only because I had to. He's a fraud. He gives bullshit a bad name.

You can read Derrida for pleasure, but you have to be interested in the puzzle of language.

My professional writing (and research pursuant thereto) is to a large degree concerned with ancient Indo-European languages and the origins of Indo-European peoples. Which fact should indicate that I am indeed very interested in the puzzle of language.

The puzzle is a computer programmer's puzzle. How does it work.

Various thinkers have theories. Derrida is a virtuouso reader of the thinkers.

For a first Derrida, I recommend _Spurs_ but for God's sake skip the introduction by somebody else.

I'm reading (slowly) "In Search of the Indo_Europeans" and "The Horse, the Wheel and Language."

Beware. The topic of Indo-European languages/origins is a minefield. I like both books although Mallory's is a bit dated. However in fairness to Mallory he has updated and/or re-argued and defended his views in more recent works. My co-author, a respected and well-known IE scholar, is highly critical of both Mallory and Anthony. That's the nature of the beast known as Indo-European studies. Highly contentious, lots of figurative blood spilled in that field. Those IE scholars are fighting an academic war to the knife, no quarter asked or given, no mercy.